Mendoza – Wine Country

Menodza is truly one of the best places in the world to enjoy wine and was high on my bucket list solely because of my love for wine. Mendoza being the wine capital of the world does not disappoint. The wine we drank and tour we stumbled upon was better than I could have ever expected. I came home with a renewed love for wine. This City is definitely a place I would revisit and highly recommend to those traveling to South America. That being said, keep in mind the slightest mention of wine makes me salivate.

There are 3 main wine regions in Mendoza – Lujan de Cuyo, Uco Valley and Maipu. Lujan de Cuyo is part of Mendoza’s “first wine zone” and Uco Valley is the new frontier of wine making in which the wine is produced at higher elevations than Lujan de Cuyo wines.

We heard the Lujan de Cuyo area offered some of the best Malbec wineries in the Country so we opted to go with one of these tours (I do LOVE my malbec wines). After doing some research and reading reviews we decided to book a wine tour with Ampora Wine Tours, which had great customer reviews.

With over 1,500 wineries in Mendoza alone, the vineyard options are truly endless!

The wine tour we did took us to 3 different vineyards, Familia Cassone, Kaiken and Dante Robino. The tour was an in-depth introduction to the production of the wines, wine flavor notes during tasting and a tour of the property. Each vineyard and wine had its own story and were all quite unique.

At the Familia Cassone vineyard the owner (Federico Cassone) himself guided the tour, which made it quite neat and intimate! Federico introduced us to the different wines, provided background on how the wines were produced and even told us how they came up with the naming of the wines (one of the wines is named after his mom). I thought it was amazing that Federico did the tour himself, it truly made the experience much more memorable.

Tasting with Federico Cassone

Familia Cassone wine tasting room

The experience for me, as a wine lover, was truly amazing. I’ve done a few wine tastings and visited a few vineyards throughout different parts of the world (Greece, France, Chile, Canada, etc) and this surpassed all of my expectations. To have an owner tour you through his own successful vineyard was worth every minute!

TIPS FOR VISITING VINEYARDS

Do not purchase bottles at the vineyards and have them shipped home (wherever home may be). To ship wine home from Argentina, especially to Canada ended up costing me double the price of the wine itself. I found all the vineyards we went to shipped wine to Canada so the wine can be purchased in your home Country.

Do get a guided tour as you will learn much more about the wine and wineries and this ensures there is someone to chauffeur you around. Getting inebriated is inevitable with so many wine tastings.

ACCOMODATIONS IN MENDOZA

For your convenience, here is a list of hotels in Mendoza. We stayed at the Intercontinental and found it to be fantastic!